How long did it take you to do that?

I get asked this question all the time. People who are looking at my artworks are curious about the time involved in creating a piece. I used to answer with a mental summation of the time involved, including the piece, the mat, the framing and so on. I would then spout off a number to give them some sort of real-time answer. And their response was usually, “Hhmmm.” Not sure what that means, but I usually interpret it to mean they are pondering that number and did not think it took that long – that they thought it would take longer.I realize that what they really want to know is HOW did I do that, not just how long. And that is a much harder question to answer. An idea takes a long time to gestate in the mind and skills of any artist. Whether the medium is music, writing, painting or even dance – there is no real punch clock tracking the time for the development of a work of art. Many ideas take years to mature in the mind of an artist, and some ideas have to be put on the shelf as they wait for the skills of the artist to grow in order to execute the idea fully. Sometimes an idea has to sit in various stages of incompleteness waiting for the materials, or maturation process, or even for more time from the artist to complete the work. Some ideas die and never mature as they are abandoned by the artist all together.The time and effort it takes to create is not a metric that can then be spouted out as a statistic about the art work. It is not measurable as a cup of sugar is measurable, or the baking time of your favorite cake is measurable. The creative process is that, it is a process that changes and grows with the talents, ideas and skills of every artist. Ideas are living, growing things that take more than time to grow, they take talent and skill and encouragement and quiet moments of pondering and patience. 

The next time someone asks me how long it takes to create a piece of my art, the answer will reflect the time it took for my skills to develop to be able to complete that idea, and the time it took for me to find the tools and supplies to make the idea in my mind look like the piece on the wall, d long it has taken me to reach the point where that work of art was ready to come to life and I was ready to give it life. So the next time someone asks me how long did it take you to do that, I will answer realistically…a little over twenty years!